SALES MANAGEMENT TRAINING GENERATES SALES FORCE LEVERAGE

Great sales managers are made, not born, through sales management training.  A better sales manager generates better sales through the sales force.  So by investing in sales management training and improving the sales force’s productivity, training investment dollars generate leverage for the organization.  Where are the key points of leverage that organizations should seek by investing in sales management training?

The most immediate leverage from sales management training can be gained from improving the coaching related to the bigger sales opportunities that nearly every salesperson has in his pipeline.  Closing the Whales is a coach’s handbook on managing bigger opportunities and is based on actual case studies of major opportunities won with which I have been involved.  After I developed a seminar on this key subject, the company for which I worked adopted it in their worldwide sales management training curriculum.  Imagine how your revenue can be improved if every salesperson improves his skills in capturing the big ones.

If I were designing a sales management training curriculum, towards the top of the list for immediate leverage would be business development.  The subject of business development is uppermost on everyone’s minds.  Any good sales management training program will stress business development.  The subject is broad, though, and the organization needs an overall business development strategy.  Business development for big-ticket sales is my arena, so I will focus on business development for major accounts.  Sales management training that includes a significant focus on major accounts will generate not only greater current year revenue, a strong major accounts program can be the difference in escaping quarter-to-quarter inconsistent sales to consistently increasing sales each quarter.  In Closing the Whales, Chapter 2 provides the framework for building a strong major accounts program.

Sales management training programs should have a balance of focus points within its curriculum. While it is excellent to include modules that yield immediate results and needed leverage, too, in sales management training, a primary goal should be focused on the long-range health and stability of the sale organization.  Recruiting, hiring, training and retaining the best salespeople is central to any sales management training program. 

There are other important skills that need to be developed in an organization’s sales management training program, but the most effective sales management training programs don’t attempt to reshape its sales management team all at once.  Drinking from a fire hydrant is tough work, and a lot gets wasted.  If an organization develops its sales managers in the three areas discussed here in its sales management training program, the performance of the sales force should be up and to the right most of the time.

Interested in learning more about sales management training? Get your copy of Closing the Whales today!